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If you start the game in 1936 and build many factories immediately you will have higher overall production by 1941. If you are intending to go to war in 1944, this is great news. Your movement rates and Effective Supply Efficiency (hence combat performance) are reduced. About Hearts of Iron 2 Wiki. If you attack with 4, all four will attack at 90% efficiency. If you should chose to attack with 12 divisions, all units will have a penalty of (12-3)x10 = 90 percent! This doesn't mean that one should never attack with more divisions than the limit.

• Hearts Of Iron 4 Construction Guide
• Hearts Of Iron 4 Production Efficiency Growth

With some delay, Paradox' latest incarnation of WW2 grand strategy game Hearts of Iron will launch on Monday.For anyone not familiar with their games, this is the WW2 version of Crusader Kings and Europa Universalis - a sandbox where you take command of any nation and try to guide it through the world war. Also pre-ordered.

I'm liking the change of scale vs. HoI3, and am really interested in how the battle plans will shake out. The production efficiency vs. New tech tradeoff also seems really neat, and historical.I've always been a big fan of Paradox games and HoI especially but not been able to keep up with this one. I'm excited, but have always liked the ability to make choices and see alternate historical events and alliances take shape throwing the timeline of real events to the wind. You mention the historical path, does that mean they've made the 4th one more linear and force you down only historical paths? Also pre-ordered.

Production strategy. IC days: The best way to understand the actual cost of a particular item is to determine the cost in IC days. This is simply the IC cost multiplied by the number of days it takes to build the unit. For instance, a ship that costs 4 IC per day will actually cost 1460 “IC days” over the course of a full year.

I'm liking the change of scale vs. HoI3, and am really interested in how the battle plans will shake out. The production efficiency vs. New tech tradeoff also seems really neat, and historical.I've always been a big fan of Paradox games and HoI especially but not been able to keep up with this one. I'm excited, but have always liked the ability to make choices and see alternate historical events and alliances take shape throwing the timeline of real events to the wind.

You mention the historical path, does that mean they've made the 4th one more linear and force you down only historical paths?Definitely not.The new 'National Focus' system is what defines the historical path.It is centered around a decision tree, and you can choose a more or less historical route. For instance, does Germany militarize the Rhineland? Does France extend the Maginot line?Each focus takes a few months or so.There is a game setting 'historical focus'. If you play with that on, the AI chooses from a prioritized list of focuses to attempt a historical route, but nothing else is set. So Germany will attempt militarization of the Rhineland, Anschluss, invading Poland, Molotov-Ribbentrop, invading France, allying with Italy etc, but any changes in the world could push them off the historical path.Note that for now only the majors nations have unique focus trees, everyone else has the same generic tree. I don't know whether there are unique nation AI.Alternatively, switching off historical focus let's them choose national focus freely.

Also pre-ordered. I'm liking the change of scale vs. HoI3, and am really interested in how the battle plans will shake out.

The production efficiency vs. New tech tradeoff also seems really neat, and historical.I've always been a big fan of Paradox games and HoI especially but not been able to keep up with this one. I'm excited, but have always liked the ability to make choices and see alternate historical events and alliances take shape throwing the timeline of real events to the wind. You mention the historical path, does that mean they've made the 4th one more linear and force you down only historical paths?My reference to historical was re: production. Over time you accumulate efficiency in producing any equipment tank, plane, etc. (but not ships I think).

If you change to a new equipment you lose some/all of that efficiency. Apparently changing variants lessens this. So for example going form a Pz IV to a Panther is a big hit, but going from a Pz IVH to a IVJ is less so. This might also apply to tank destroyers, assault guns, and self-propelled artillery from a chassis. I like the tradeoff because it provides a reason you might continue producing older equipment, much like the combatants.(This might all be wrong however. I'll need to do extensive 'research' later today ). Honestly this feels like paradox finally achieving the vision they've had since the original Hearts of Iron.

With their much improved QA process today, it might even be stable and enjoyable right out of the box!Most importantly, it'll use Steam for multiplayer games. Which has been the standard since CK2. And they've been getting better at it with every release.

If you've ever played multiplayer before they went steam, you understand what I mean. They could be awesome, once you got them to work. But getting them to work.Well that sometimes took minor miracles.So stoked for this after the mess of HOI3. So, the Cadet edition is the base game.

The Colonel Edition is the base game plus a whole bunch of country specific sprites. Which I bought forgetting that I usually run with Nato designations on and 3D units off. So, if you do that, don't bother. I can't remember whats on the third edition but it wasn't anything interesting to me.I love how they handle Equipment/Division building. Infastructure/Fatorys are a really big deal, and its important to spin up stuff early game.National Focuses and the Research tree are also really well done. The AI control of fronts and Offensive/Defensive lines can be a little wonky, but it does a pretty good job if you don't want to micro it.

Oranging.Really like the game so far. Many of the aspects of how the game works are on my list of 'how it should be'. Biggest gripe is that the UI still needs some work to be more consistent but that is just about every strategy game ever. I have about 10 hours in, with 2 games and some tutorial action and I am very happy with my purchase.This is coming across as an easy game to interact with on a basic level and a daunting level of interaction to master.

I'll be spending a lot of hours with this one. For the record it runs quite well on my Intel HD 4000 powered laptop.I have most graphics options turned down, but 3D units on. Still looks nice.I dig the painted portrait style, the interface is generally very good although it's be nice with a bigger screen.The game is extremely enjoyable so far, and I love how it lets your consciously choose your path.

I'm on my first game, Italy (kept playing after the tutorial, but Italy was always a favorite of mine) and going communist and spring Republican Spain didn't feel like fighting the system but like a path I could choose (albeit with significant drawbacks and some uncertainty as to how it played out).I have problems getting a naval invasion going. The orders are set, the sea zones are green, the four units are in the origin province but i get a 'not all units have arrived' or something like that error and can't start the naval invasion.Any ideas? I have problems getting a naval invasion going. The orders are set, the sea zones are green, the four units are in the origin province but i get a 'not all units have arrived' or something like that error and can't start the naval invasion.Any ideas?I managed a successful invasion of the UK last night as Germany.

I was stumped for a while until I added some offensive lines after the beachhead. Then I could assign divisions to those plans, and they jumped into prep at the selected port.24 divisions took almost 6 months of prep to go from Calais to Dover, and ran over an over extended UK in much less time than that. I had 'naval' superiority by putting 2000 Ju-87s over the Channel and Southern England with orders to bomb anything larger than a rowboat. I sunk at least 4 BB/BC and 1 CV in port strikes on Portsmouth.Anyone found a place to see stats on the naval attrition battle? I found the stats tab for an air region, but I wanted to look at how my U-boats were doing.

I had HoI 3 on my steam account but never bother becuase it seems way too complicated when compared to HoI 2. How is this one in terms of complexity?I played a LOT of HoI 3, and it was my first Paradox game.

I think HoI 4 has less bad complexity and has left meaningful decisions in. National Focuses help by giving research buffs, IC, etc. To certain choices. It replaces the old events for things like Czechslovakia and Danzig.Also really enjoying the equipment aspect. Creating variants from combat experience is a nice touch, ie. Bf109A I made with more guns/engine, especially how that interacts with keeping production efficiency.

I've researched Fw190s but I'm still producing 109A's because the efficiency is so much higher.HoI 3 is great if you wanted to micro the entire OOB of the Eastern Front. But I'm really enjoying 4 now, and can't see myself going back. Man, I was thinking nobody else on here played this. I played a ton of 1&2(I lived those games when they came out) but I hardly ever touched 3(only about 60-70 hours in it) and I'm having a blast so far.

Sure, there are AI quirks and bugs, but overall very solid.The biggest AI issues I have seems to come from my allies. Italy could not handle Greece allowing them to conquer half of Yugoslavia before I could pull some divisions away from the Eastern Front to help out. Then Greece started expanding East and since USA was not really involved(I influenced the Facist party there causing them to take over) Greece and New Zealand were the troops who landed in France. I was able to push them out(yay Panzers) but England is trying to land in the Netherlands now. On the Eastern front I got with in a couple of tiles from Moscow(they declared on me) but now they are pushing back.hard.

Man, I was thinking nobody else on here played this. I played a ton of 1&2(I lived those games when they came out) but I hardly ever touched 3(only about 60-70 hours in it) and I'm having a blast so far. Sure, there are AI quirks and bugs, but overall very solid.The biggest AI issues I have seems to come from my allies. Italy could not handle Greece allowing them to conquer half of Yugoslavia before I could pull some divisions away from the Eastern Front to help out. Then Greece started expanding East and since USA was not really involved(I influenced the Facist party there causing them to take over) Greece and New Zealand were the troops who landed in France. I was able to push them out(yay Panzers) but England is trying to land in the Netherlands now. On the Eastern front I got with in a couple of tiles from Moscow(they declared on me) but now they are pushing back.hard.Wasn't Italy not being able to handle Greece pretty historical?

In one playthrough attempt I went Z-Plan and got Netherlands, Denmark, and Norway all fascist before any wars started. It feels good at both following history and allowing off the wall things to happen. Yeah, Germany had to bail them out.

I had just pushed them(Greece) down so far I thought Italy could be able to finish them off so I pulled back 90% of my troops and reassigned them to the Eastern Front and left a token(250 close air support and 250 fighters) air force down there. Didn't seem to help at all. I should have known I was in trouble when Italy didn't finish off Ethiopia until mid 1937.

I don't even want to know how thats possible.This is definitely a huge step up, from what I played, of 3 and certainly 1&2. I've seen a lot of posts on Reddit of people being, imo, incredibly nitpicky. Everything from not enough portraits to the text on the pop-ups.

Of course, knowing Paradox they'll have DLC that'll fix all that. Yeah, Germany had to bail them out.

I had just pushed them(Greece) down so far I thought Italy could be able to finish them off so I pulled back 90% of my troops and reassigned them to the Eastern Front and left a token(250 close air support and 250 fighters) air force down there. Didn't seem to help at all. I should have known I was in trouble when Italy didn't finish off Ethiopia until mid 1937. I don't even want to know how thats possible.This is definitely a huge step up, from what I played, of 3 and certainly 1&2.

I've seen a lot of posts on Reddit of people being, imo, incredibly nitpicky. Everything from not enough portraits to the text on the pop-ups. Of course, knowing Paradox they'll have DLC that'll fix all that.Hearts of Iron always had a very nitpicky and very vocal community. The official forums were drowning in 'THE AI SUCKS' threads over the weekend (that is, before people played the game).On the other hand it's also a community that started a flag mod last year (' let's make three flags for each nation, one for each ideology').If you can get past the occasional hyperbole, it's a pretty fantastic community in many ways. I'm still on my first game, and having a ton of fun.My Italy is communist, has joined the Spanish civil war on the Republican side, Germany joined Nationalist Spain which was close to annihilation, so apart from a bit of 'oh shit, Germany declared war on me in '37' I had to scramble a proper army to Spain.

It looks like the fascists are almost exclusively German mechanised infantry, and my arrival in Spain was somewhat chaotic because they overran the port just before I arrived (clearly I overestimated the Republican troops - it was far from the front when I picked the landing site).Thus my disorganized troops ended up arriving right at the front spaced out over a month. First contact wasn't pretty.I'm getting slightly more organized, and now I remember my small raiding party on the east coast (that naval invasion got started back when Nationalist Spain was a handful of provinces, not the significant half of Spain that it is now).Out of supply and almost surrounded, they make a beeline for the south. Meanwhile I'm trying to cut off German reinforcements by sea (I assume that's their only route).6 divisions of Soviet volunteers just arrived in Italy, and I started improving relations in the hope of joining the Comintern before all hell breaks loose.I'm hopeful if slightly nervous.I rule the seas, but on the negative side, Germany has air superiority over Italy while I have yet to really grasp the air system.I haven't had this much fun with singleplayer HOI ever before. Hearts of Iron always had a very nitpicky and very vocal community.

The official forums were drowning in 'THE AI SUCKS' threads over the weekend (that is, before people played the game).On the other hand it's also a community that started a flag mod last year (' let's make three flags for each nation, one for each ideology').Admittedly I don't spend much time on either forum(reddit or official) so I was kinda shocked when I poked my head in there on Tuesday and saw tons of stupid(imo) complaints.My game eventually ended today, Between Greece, USSR and China I just got hammered. Was not pretty at all. Back to the drawing board!

You remember where I said I learned not to start a war with America after they got the stricter Monroe Doctrine? I managed to cause this:Yeah. I'm kinda shocked my Coup attempt worked. It only lasted about six months. But six months was more then long enough to let me start stomping around South America. I'm starting to grasp the whole air combat thing, its.

Not nearly as hard as I thought.However. Grandpappy Germany. Is not having a good go of it.What the hell are a bunch of Aussies doing in Northern Europe in 1942??? I have a question about recruiting units. Should/can I start recruiting a huge number of divisions at the beginning?

Is there a forcelimit in this game like other Paradox games?Edit: I also don't understand how supply works. Is there somewhere where I can see how much my tanks/airplanes/navy will consume? I havn't played HoI since the first one.Units have supply consumption as a stat (depends on the battalions in the division, their equipment and your doctrines).

The amount of supplies in a state depends on the infrastructure, and there needs to be a supply line (land or sea) too a supply center (I'm not sure if that has to be your capital).Take a look at the supply map mode. I have a question about recruiting units. Should/can I start recruiting a huge number of divisions at the beginning? Is there a forcelimit in this game like other Paradox games?Edit: I also don't understand how supply works. Is there somewhere where I can see how much my tanks/airplanes/navy will consume?

I havn't played HoI since the first one.Units have supply consumption as a stat (depends on the battalions in the division, their equipment and your doctrines). The amount of supplies in a state depends on the infrastructure, and there needs to be a supply line (land or sea) too a supply center (I'm not sure if that has to be your capital).Take a look at the supply map mode. Second Option - Don't Go Dirty Communist With Italy, be a good little Fascist and Germany won't kick your face inOn the Oil thing - Resources are used to build equipment. Equipment can get broken in which case it needs to be replaced. This is true of Planes and Tanks and Guns and so on.

Not sure about ships. Infastructure keeps supplys going to your units, but equipment factors into some of those supplies.Outside of that, resources don't appear to get spent.

(They might get spent for repairing ships, I'm not sure. Haven't really played with Navy's yet.). For those wondering about supply and navies the quick reply is no, it doesn't take oil or fuel. 'Fuel' isn't even a thing in HOI4. Resources are consumed by building and since there are discrete units within a division, air wing, or navy, they must be replaced over time.Supply lines are definitely a thing though and you will find your troops fighting with heavy malus when cut off from supply lines. I am still not 100% certain where the lines are drawn from, but it isn't just your capital.

I think you can draw supply from urban centres, at least to some extent. I haven't seen explicit statements about how supply is modelled though.I like how resources are consumed for production and not stockpiled. I like how stockpiles can be abstracted by being able to produce something without actually having the necessary resources coming in but instead you have a large efficiency penalty.

. The United States is pretty much considered 'easy mode', and for good reason, particularly in III.

They start off with the largest amount of IC in the game, the biggest knowledge pool, and a very powerful navy — and it only gets bigger and meaner as the game progresses. And then there's the obvious fact that the Axis can't hit the American mainland because of geographical separation, and even if they managed to get a few ships to the coastal areas, they'd get massacred.

The only weaknesses the US has is that, starting out, they have a weak army and air force and low technology, so using that knowledge pool is essential to catch up with the rest of the world. But by '45, the US will almost always be in a dominant position, as the only other economic powerhouse, the USSR, will have almost certainly spent a lot of resources and taken a lot of damage fighting Germany. All of this isn't just, it's actually toned down compared to how powerful the US economy was in, complete with the fact that, by the end,. Later expansions make the US even more broken, with For The Motherland actually allowing the US to get a massive manpower boost once 'The Day of Infamy' event triggers, which not only adds 400+ manpower instantly to their pool, but also revokes The New Deal (which imposed a manpower penalty on the USA) and gives a 25% bonus to manpower growth for a couple of years. Starting from II, engineer brigades are one of the most useful things you can equip your units with, doubly so if fighting a defensive war. Engineers are relatively cheap addition to your troops and cost small amount of fuel from the start, but in the same time they considerably increase defense capabilities of units they support, increase dig-in cap, remove or at least seriously decrease penalties for fighting in otherwise horrible terrain, bypass fortification bonuses, considerably decrease amphibious assault penalty, allow effortless river-crossing and - at least in II - increase the speed of unit they accompany by 1.

In case of III, they start with speed of 8 - which is enough to keep up with medium tanks and motorized infantry without slowing them down. In II, later models also start to gradually decrease softness value of units they accompany, which means at least part of the damage that normally hurts infantry will be ignored. IV changed Engineers from being a brigade to a support company, but made them into a support company that every single possible unit can benefit from having due to their all around bonuses and cheap price. While a lot of support companies are situational, Engineers are a mainstay regardless of anything.

Close air support units, especially in II and III. They are really good at their job (directly hitting infantry and tanks) and can keep up on their own in the air, while other bombers require escorts and general air superiority. But what really makes them game-breakingly powerful is the ability to cause damage to retreating units. Normally when unit is retreating, it can't be hurt with anything, short of nukes. CAS units can keep pounding such units and do so with complete impunity. So when unit finally reaches nearby province, it can loose up to third of its strength, making it an easy pick for ground units.

And the bombardment can continue. Also, in II, most of CAS doctrines are accessible by '38 mark, making their missions roughly twice as efficient before the war even breaks out. Naval Bombers, to the point that many players constructed Naval Bombers exclusively instead of naval fleets. Paradox tried to combat this problem in later patches by requiring other ships to detect enemy fleet before Naval Bombers could engage them. While not as useful as in II, even in III they are still very powerful units against enemy fleets, especially convoys. And depending on size and shape of the air theatre toward location of naval bases, they can potentially sink half of enemy ships within a month of intense bombing in IV.

Intentionally prolonging war in Ethiopia as Italy is one of the most gamey tactics imaginable, in all game versions. In II, since you are at war, it halves the demand for consumer goods, which increases usable part of Industrial Capacity. In Darkest Hour it also allows better training of your commanders. In III it combines both of above, giving you more IC to use and providing a source of experience for troops and commanders, but most importantly it generates Land and Air Experience, which affect research speed of respective doctrines and certain key technologies, giving Italy a massive bonus three years before the outbreak of WW2. In IV, the war can go for as long as the Italian player doesn't want to engage in the political part of the focus tree, providing with tonnes of Army and Air experience. It also allows other fascists countries to join, either with land-lease for Ethiopia (so it maintains cohension longer and provides free experience via equipment usage) or sending a division or two to Italy as volunteers to grind some extra experience directly. There is a tendency to at least ban outside countries from meddling in the war during multiplayer matches.

Strategic rockets, especially after developing V2 or stand-ins for it. Unlike strategic bombers, rockets are extremely cheap, and more importantly, fast to construct. So what if they are one-use-only, if singe rocket can achieve in one hour more than strategic bomber in a month. By the end of the month, you will produce another two.

It is entirely possible to produce enough rockets to absolutely crash entire nations, especially in II and III. In fact, in II rockets are often banned in multiplayer, because with loss of IC, players also lose slots for their tech-teams, which alone can cripple a country without any way to regain lost time. If played right, a handful of rockets can turn England into rubble, while the infrastructure will be so damaged it will take at least few months to get the country up and going. And when the industry is down, no units are produced. At all. In IV, due to how repairs are reworked, it's entirely possible to cripple AI forever.

AI has a tendency to convert as much factories as possible into the war material ones. Repairs are done with use of civilian factories. And AI will keep only the minimal required amount, so in case of heavy bombardment, it might take years to rebuild, while also lacking resources to retool some factories into civilian ones. Later patches 'fixed' this by making repairs considerably easier to conduct,. Trade deals in II and III can be abused against AI.

Each trade deal increases diplomatic relation between both sides and the higher the relations, the cheaper the exchange goes for both countries, but the exchange rates of old deals are kept intact. In practical terms it means it is perfectly possible to sell supplies to AI for money, making few separate deals for it.

The first one will be about making big bucks, the following few will be about building up relations and still making pretty penny. Then, when relations are high due to this string of deals, AI will sell own resources at a discout price to a 'befriended' country, usually accepting back own money paid for the overpriced supplies. AI will be unlikely to cancel any of those deals due to combination of high profit and script calculation of how 'favourable' the deals are. If done right, the final exchange rate might even triple the value of trade in favour of human player, allowing to rob AI blind.:. Dropping behind enemy lines can in certain cases win a war within a day or so. AI tends to focus all the units on the borders, rarely keeping anything stationed in the interior, aside maybe capital and extremely important strategic locations. Which means most of the provinces containing victory points are left unguarded.

And they usually also contain factories. Few well-timed drops can take out most of enemy industry and victory points, either shortening the war considerably or outright winning it. Suicide mission for capital is also one of pretty good strategies. If capital is taken, entire resource base is lost and all supply lines are cut. This is considered equal to cheating and usually banned in multiplayer. Producing Garrisons with Military Police detachments can completely negate partisans.

It might not sound impressive, but Garrisons in such configuration can outperforming presence of few divisions in a province and quite efficiently spill the control to the neighbor ones. This was nerfed in III, where conquered or controlled foreign land always has minimal partisan rating, slowly decreasing over the course of 20 years, which is more than the game lasts. All supplies for a nation's armies originate from their capital city. This means if an enemy capital city is surrounded, but not taken, then the war is effectively over: the opposing side's entire military outside of the capital is automatically cut off from all supplies and reinforcements and will quickly disintegrate. Darkest Hour rebalances numerous attachment brigades and expanded their sheer number and variety. Almost all land units are restricted to single brigade attached. Infantry divisions can have two.

Around '42 or so mark it means the unit in question can get the firepower doubled thanks to attachments, while saving manpower, IC and most importantly - unit counter for command structure - by fielding one buffed division instead of two basic ones. A '42 division with towed artillery and tank destroyers is virtually unstoppable by contemporaries. Cavalry is one of the cheapest and most over-looked brigades in the game.

Not only it is very powerful for its price, it also has almost no terrain penalties and costs no fuel to run. As long as you are not facing tanks, cavalry brigades help shred infantry into ribbons due to big Soft Attack bonus. Later models represent moto- and mechanised cavalry, so they decrease division's Softness rating due to having half-trucks, armored cars and tanks, while carrying even more guns. This is especially useful for Japan when fighting war in China, as it.

Extra anti-air attachment for ships quickly become ridiculously powerful. Around '43 mark, the ship AA defense is so strong thanks to those, it is possible to essentially negate the superiority of carriers. If combined with radar on any of the capital ships, fleet uniformly equipped with extra AA is a total overkill for planes. And it can go even further from there once rocket technology is advanced enough to develop surface-to-air missiles for additional punch. Coastal forts.

Only specific shore provinces can be targets of amphibious assault, marked by a beach icon. Amphibious assault comes by itself with the highest possible penalty for attacker and the amount of trooops used for it is strictly limited, even with maxed out technology. Thus with coastal forts of at least level 6 (out of 10), it is possible to stack a penalty for landing party so high the attack efficiency will hit zero percent.

Coastal forts are very fast and relatively cheap to build with 1940 construction technology. And there is also entrenching bonus of the troops simply stationed in those provinces, adding another debuff for attacker. If neighbouring provinces are also garrisoned by anything above militias, it won't be possible to create encirclement for the shore garrison using para-drop. Once properly prepared, defenses against amphibious assault are impossible to overcome and thus making it impossible to land troops. III nerfed it by making it possible to land anywhere, but only ports are capable of resupplying troops and naturally there is still only one province to land on when it comes to tiny Pacific islands.

Practical knowledge. It replaced already powerful gearing bonus from II, but gearing bonus required continuous production of the same series of units. Practical knowledge is just accumulated with each finished building or unit. And it not only decrease the time and costs required to finish production, but also affected related research by really large margin. One of the most gamey tactics for industrialization is based on building relatively cheap infrastructure (which is always useful to move supplies and units), thus quickly gaining large amount of Construction practical knowledge, making factories much cheaper and finished in few weeks instead of over a year. And they will further fuel the practical knowledge, snowballing the bonus further.

Or just building suddenly cheap and fast forts. USA pulling this goes from already powerful to virtually unbeatable due to having bigger industry than all other Great Powers combined. Preparing anti-air research has similar, and utterly accidental, effect. By building just a handful of provincial AA defenses, practical knowledge for artillery skyrockets, greatly decreasing construction and research of all types and sorts of heavy guns, including those from tanks. Building vanilla heavy cruiser - without absolutely any improvements on board - takes roughly 6 months and costs nothing. And even if seriously underequipped, it will still do fine up until about '41 mark or can be used to hunt down convoys with no fear from destroyers.

But the real kicker is about how it provides capital ship practical knowledge and a lot of it, which can in turn greatly speed-up construction of the real deal: battleships and battlecruisers. Normally they can take up to three years to finish. Japan can gain this way mad amount of practical knowledge for capital ships, thus entering Pacific War with numerous and modern battleships, utterly wrecking US Navy or even standing a chance against player-controlled America.

Hearts Of Iron 4 Construction Guide

Germans start in '36 with few of their pocket cruisers almost finished - which makes construction of not two, but entire series of Bismarck battleships even more tempting. Humble drop tanks.

While all fuel tank improvements make aircraft easier to pick and slows them down, drop tanks can go as far as double range of certain types of planes, with minimal drawbacks. This is extremely useful when fighting in Russia (where airfields are few and sparse) and in the Pacific (where you only have a handful of islands and carries as possible landing spots) and can pretty much turn the tide of war all by itself once implemented. Convoy raiding and strategic bombardment of any type is this in certain versions of III (it was nerfed quickly with patches). The national unity can be decreased with extensive destruction of merchant marine and continuous bombing. In fact, it's possible to bomb Britain hard enough for it to surrender, while not doing any invasion on the Islands. If, convoy raiding can completely collapse AI's ability to conduct war. It was proven time and again a continuous and extensive convoy raiding will render British Empire defenseless, as troops stationed in the colonies will be extremely undersupplied, making them easy pick for Japan and even Italy.

Meanwhile, a large stockpile of resources will wait in colonial ports, allowing conquerors to take them over and use for their own industry. Speaking of submarines - torpedoes research in Darkest Hour and in vanilla III can turn already powerful submarines (if well-used) to terror of the sea, especially if rushing the tech. With proper research, submarines can get so powerful, a single unit of them will be capable of what normally takes three. And the smaller the size of submarine stack, the harder it is to detect them, making them even more efficient.

But more importantly, the torpedoes increase general hitting power of subs (and also increase their attack range in Darkest Hour), so it's possible to take down destroyers with ease -. Using wars with minor countries to let you pass Total Economic Mobilization and Service By Requirement laws lets you swell your IC and manpower by a hilarious degree before World War II starts.

Especially bad if you're a major power, and just ignore the 'war' while you build up a huge number of divisions, planes, and ships. This got so bad that for the Their Finest Hour expansion, a special restriction was set where those laws could only be passed if the enemy you faced had a minimum of half your IC, otherwise you're stuck with just War Economy and Three-Year-Draft. Earlier editions of III turned your intelligence apparatus into one of these when used properly. The 'Sabotage Production' mission, when coupled with 'Counterintelligence' to eliminate enemy domestic spies, enabled allowed you to utterly cripple an enemy's industrial capacity, to the point that, for example, Germany would take months to conquer Poland and would get stonewalled in France, leaving them ripe for an American or Soviet attack. Later expansions removed the ability to sabotage production.

Hearts Of Iron 4 Production Efficiency Growth

Since III has the most advanced logistic system in the entire series, air strikes against enemy controlled infrastructure could bog down both offensives and defensive frontlines. Knowing or assuming possible logistical patterns of enemy and then bombarding specific provinces would drop the local infrastructure.

This in turn would not only cut off supply transport for given day, but also make less supplies pass through that area due to damaged infrastructure or forcing a lenghty detour. And since each province in the logistic chain retains part of the supplies to sustain the system itself, a detour or just smaller flow could easily mean not enough - or none at all - supplies would reach frontlines.

In similar vein, a handful of surgical strikes on ports used by enemy can effectively cut the invading force from supplies and making it easy prey for your troops. Trans-Siberian Railway is the only half-decent infrastructure for entire Soviet Far East. Bombing 2-3 provinces containing the railway cuts out entire Soviet army in the region out of supplies. AI then tends to send convoys to make out for the shortage. Convoys that go all the way from Murmansk and Arkhangelsk to Atlantic Ocean, around the Africa, Asia and then trying to reach Vladivostok. Needless to say, this takes a lot of convoys that can be effortlessly taken out by Imperial Japanese Navy, hurting Soviet Union even more. Fascism ideology is seen as this.

You can get yourself ready for war faster, can have a larger manpower pool, can invade other countries and puppet them easily, and can have numerous industry-boosting attributes. Democracies and Communism are seen as inferior, compared to it. Generic focus tree for fascism gives a gargantuan 7% increase of recruitable population, combined with -10% training time, regardless of actual conscription law and all of that during peace time.

For comparison, communists get 10% extra division recovery rate note A miniscule boost to speed at which organisation is regained and 550 Political Power, while democracies get and either 20% fort, AA, and military factory construction speed bonus note and a steep penalty toward joining factions or the ability to send volunteer forces. Sending volunteers was always strong, but with Waking the Tiger DLC it can win the world war for Fascist countries by itself before the war even breaks out and considerably strengthen Soviets, despite issues with the Great Purge. Volunteers generate Army experience when fighting, while the units send as them and commander grind experience for themselves, too. The government accepting volunteers is also willing to accept military attache, which will provide sending country with 20% of all experience gained by receiver of the attache. Combine that with land-lease of equipment, preferably the obsolete one that is useless anyway and the experience gains are around 2-2.5 points per day for both army and air, because your volunteers have your own air wings attached to them now and old planes were given as land lease. All combined, this allows to easily gain few hundreds of experience points before outbreak of the war, allowing to design desired divisions and produce powerful variants of tanks and planes.

All while democratic and unaligned countries are stuck with gaining minuscule experience via army training. Land lease itself is very useful, because there is nothing preventing you from arming both sides, so the experience gained this way is doubled and can prolong the war, meaning even more experience gained. Like nothing else.

Support companies:. All the artillery support companies you can attach to divisions.

While they are just a single brigade of given type, they still provide additional punch to your unit, while not following rules of standard artillery. Adding standard towed artillery brigade(s) decrease speed of the unit and costs a lot of resources. Support units don't have this problem, so you can attach artillery and AT guns to your light tank brigade without slowing it down, while almost doubling its fighting capabilities, at almost no price to that. They also don't have any terrain penalties that are a nightmare for artillery divisions, thus Mountaineers, Paratroopers and Marines can gain additional punch, without any trade-off. Recon companies.

They are the only way to increase recon value of a division note Grand Battleplan doctrine adds +1 recon to all divisions, but that's it and the tech is almost by the end of the tech tree. During combat, the unit with higher recon, regardless if defender or attacker, has combat initiative. The higher the recon, the bigger the chance for commander to pick the best tactic for given moment.

And if your recon is higher than enemy's, you gain reroll for tactics, always being able to counter their commander. On top of it all, it increases attack speed by 10%. Since it's cheap and accessible from the start, it's a must-have for almost everyone. Maintenance company allows to completely ignore reliability stat of land units. Normally, you can spend army experience to make better models of given equipment, but it almost always decrease their reliability, so you have to spend a lot of experience on reliability too, or the equipment will be prone to breaks, jams and other mechanical problems (think German Tiger and Panther tanks). Maintenance company starts with +20% to reliability (and non-modified equipment has reliability of 80%) and only goes higher from there, so you can completely ignore reliability of your tanks and artillery, saving huge amounts of experience, while enjoying all the benefits of better models.

Anti-air, at least in multiplayer. It's so-so by itself, but it's something most players just ignore to both incorporate and account for, leading to a nasty surprise when the air fleet on ground attack mission is burning through planes like there is no tomorrow. And they also provide a small bonus to hard attack and piercing ratings, being handy against armour. Heavy Tanks and their Self Propelled & Tank Destroyer variants.

Putting a single Heavy Tank battalion even on regular infantry divisions will give such a massive boost to their armor, that the AI can't figure any way to counter it, effectively always giving you a massive 50% increase to damage and defense. And self-propelled artillery guns mounted on heavy tank chassis takes it a step further, as they provide insane amount of soft attack and decent hard attack, while retaining all the other benefits of heavy tank battalion. They are so powerful, most of guides for long-lasting wars with bigger powers than own country call for using those SP guns. While they are relatively expensive to make and need to be researched first, a single battalion of most primitive model has bigger punch than most end-game artillery pieces. They are so broken, they can be even used against unsuspecting human-controlled army in multiplayer.

And if. Army XP upgraded Heavy Tank Destroyers attached to regular infantry with support units make those units extremely effective at holding defensive lines. Heavy Tank Destroyers help improve the divisions hardness which makes them better against artillery and infantry and the extremely high piercing will make the attacking tank division lose it's organisation extremely quickly. They aren't as useful on attack as infantry units with artillery (either regulation or self propelled) but it costs less production than arty or normal tanks. A so-called combined listed above exploit of SPGs and TDs models based on heavy tanks with replacing all infantry with marines brigades, to gain massive buff in hard terrain and negate penalties for river crossing and potential amphibious assaults.

It was so powerful and overused, most players didn't make anything else for their land forces aside maybe token mobile forces for encirclements., specifically to 'fix' this issue. But while this prevents universal use of Space Marines, it is still possible to have a handful of such elite divisions. Due to the way how targets are accquired by air units, the best way of managing airforce is to create hundreds of tiny air wings, 10-20 planes each in case of land-based and no bigger than 5 for carrier-based airplanes. Each air wing entering combat can only accquire single target for the duration of the engagement, which more often than not means a total overkill of said single target.

But leaves everything else untouched. So all the 50 naval bombers doing carrier sortie attack the very same battlecruiser, leaving the rest of enemy fleet unscratched. But if planes are divided into tiny air wings, each of them accquires a target on their own, since they ignore targets already taken (unless there are not enough targets, when they will concentrate). The same 50 naval bombers can attack 10 different ships (and still easily sink or badly damage most of them) if they operate as ten small wings rather than single big one. In case of air-to-air combat it also makes short work of enemy interceptors and fighters, as there are just many, many more targets, each attacking the same, huge air wing of enemy. Tiny air wings, each engaging on their own, also drastically increase chance for getting (and make their bonus twice as strong due to 'small air wing' multiplier).

Technically, the best wing size for interceptors consists of only 3 planes. They have the best K/D ratio (to the point where their superior combat efficiency and targetting is noticable within just few days of intense air combat), but it takes just too much clicking to make them so small, while there is a keyboard shortcut for making wings in size of 10 planes and those are still better than anything larger. And depending on the game version, this was to prevent overcrowding with small air wings. The game still however favours small size of wings even in latest versions. Inversion of above is the reason why 40 width divisions can easily beat anything else that isn't also 40 width.

While two 20 width divisions can technically attack 'twice' a 40 width division, they have only half of its stats (which is a BIG issue when it comes to, say, piercing or armor). Meanwhile, the 40 width division can only engage one of those 20 width, but brings twice as much firepower, concentrated on a single target, in quick succession turning it into mince and forcing retreat, leaving the 2nd 20 width division to be pounded by twice as strong 40 width, now with clear numerical superiority. By game mechanics, 40 20+20. Man the Guns reintroduces motorised artillery. It's your regular artillery, but towed by fast moving trucks. Previously, the only way to give motorised units extra punch was costly and hard to research motorised rocket artillery, which also had the disadvantage of being only good against soft targets. With all types of artillery being now motorised, it is possible to replicate the all-powerful 14-4 infantry-artillery divisions obliterating everything on their way, only moving three times faster and having small hardness value on top of that.

And without the costly research and production or slow movement of tank-based self-propelled artillery and tank destroyers. Dispersed Industry tech-tree in its current form. On paper, Concentrated Industry outperforms it with sheer production output by a margin of 5% per tier (totalling at 25%).

But any switch of production lines requires lenghty catch-up, as the production efficiency drops to baseline 10%. Dispersed Industry allows to retain part of the existing efficiency when switching to higher tier of gear, while also having higher production efficiency base (up to starting at 35%). On top of that, there are also bonuses to equipment conversion and against air raids.

So while final result of 100% production efficiency is lower for Dispersed Industry, it can reach that level about a year earlier and allows to put any new factories into better use thanks to higher baseline efficiency. Ironically, Dispersed in initial form was clearly inferior to Concentrated and then it was 'balanced' with one of the patches, but only on paper.

In practical, gameplay terms, Dispersed Industry is perfect for fielding top tier equipment and taking benefit from new technology, aka something you need to win the war. Using Air, Army and Naval XP to create vehicle, plane or warship variations. Army XP is extremely easy to get once the war starts in earnest. After the initial training period where you get a small handful of the XP to make sure your divisions are properly equipped, you only really use XP to upgrade tanks. Getting 500 XP easy when in combat. The best strategy is to wait until you've researched a new tank, destroyer or self propelled model and immediately use 500 XP to upgrade it.

Start by upping reliability by 4 or 5 points, and then armour (for a tank) or the gun for a tank destroyer or self propelled artillery. It will be roughly 80% as effective as the starting model in the next tier is, which is often several years away. The 1941 Medium Tank can often be rushed very early, and with 500 XP spent upgrading you can keep using them until you eventually research the modern tank. Air XP is slightly less easy to get, but again the same strategy applies as with tanks. Rushing to 1940 Tier 2 fighters and upgrading them to have increased reliability and agility will make them extremely survivable. The other types of planes, upgrading their attack ability can make them extremely deadly. Naval XP is hard to get in large numbers, but there is only really two good units to use your XP on.

Carriers, and Battleships. Which one depends on what nation you are, and how you are developing your navy tactics. Both of these methods allow the 1940 ship used to be as useful as the next ship in the line which is meant to be developed around 1944.

If you use the Base Strike option, as a nation like the UK, USA, Italy or Japan, where you have carrier based fleets, you get as much XP as you can through focus trees or early combat, rush to 1940 Tier 3 Carriers, and use the XP on as much of an increase to Deck Size as you can, hopefully combined with a Deck Size increase Naval design company. When you add on the deck size increases of both of these and the Base Strike doctrine having a bonus to the overcrowding, you can get upwards of 100+ planes per carrier, with 4 carriers per fleet you will annihilate any opposition. And you can still use the Air XP to boost the carrier fighters or carrier naval bombers. If you use the Fleet in Being strategy, then you upgrade your Battleships or Super Heavy Battleships with faster engines and bigger guns. It's not very subtle. With proper timing of national focuses, Germany can enter the war with Panther tank and in advanced variants, not just stock version. That means a medium tank tier 3 with upgrades, with nominal year of research set for 1943.

Allies, if lucky and dedicated, will at best have medium tank tier 1 when the war breaks out. The advantage is so huge a handful of divisions can annihilate entire armies without even slowing down. With Death or Dishonor DLC, out of all countries, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia, both minor states that can barely hold ground (and ), turn into absurdly powerful countries even without any gamey tactics and tricks. Czechoslovakia can quickly turn into a fortress almost impossible to pierce, with all borders covered with high level forts and recruitment pool increased enough to man all those forts, stalling any possible advances forever over hard terrain and numerous bunkers. Yugoslavia almost doubles its resource (it's one of the main exporters of aluminium from the start and gains more of it) and industrial base, while gaining additional research and military bonuses (and since it has much more resources than it will need for a looong while, they can be easily traded for free access to foreign civilian factories, allowing to quickly build up own industry) and basically is stronger than neighbouring Italy in the end of national focuses. This is openly mocked by fandom for utter lack of balance, ground in history or just basic geological reality. spirit, regardless of version.

When introduced in Waking the Tiger DLC, it simply provided Germany with -20% demand of factories dedicated to consumer goods. That meant not a single factory had to be used for civilians and entire industry could be used for construction., it 'only' provides with -5% demand on consumer goods, but all buildings are 25% faster to build, making them even more broken. One of the first German focuses gives 2x 50% decrease on industrial research, meaning ability to rush toward Construction tech tier 4, which provides +40% construction speed in total.

That same focus unlocks a minister with another +10% on construction of civilian factories (those build everything else), giving a range of +65 to +75% of construction time. Most constructions will be finished within a month at this point, some within weeks, ballooning the industrial capacity to. Sure, MEFO bills need to be prolonged every 180 days for steadily increasing price and growing sustained cost of Political Power, but it's perfectly possible to sustain the bills all the way until war breaks out, when they are simply no longer needed. It gets even more broken in multiplayer, when Axis members switch to Free Trade policy. Normally, Free Trade is undesired, as it decrease the amount of resources country has for own use, automatically exporting 80% of them, traded for civilian factories.

But in case of multiplayer, allies can trade between each other without of fear of AI breaking the deal, essentially making the downside of the policy meaningless, keeping their industrial potential intact (since they give each other factories back) and get all the benefits of Free Trade: +15% construction speed and -10% research time. Germany can gain this way +90% bonus in total to construction speed of civilian factories, running out of free slots for construction within few months. World tension, or rather lack of it.

Almost all Allied countries need specific threshold of world tension to even start national focuses related with rearming and gearing toward the war. With a bit of proper timing and self-restrain, fascists countries can keep the world tension at bay, preventing war preparations for their future enemies. In multiplayer, it is usually outright demanded for players behind Germany, Italy and Japan to take certain focuses in specific years, because otherwise Allied players are completely blocked. But against AI, and gets seriously confused when it can't.